moments
by iRiDeScEnT DrReAm
Summary: "Magnus wondered if he could drown in the grief of that alone, if he let himself." In which Magnus thinks about death, love, and a certain blue-eyed Shadowhunter who changed everything.


_I was digging through some old writing the other day when I found this little gem, so hidden and buried away that I'd entirely forgotten it even existed. Man, 14 year old me really had a lot of confidence to even think of posting shit like that. _

_To avoid subjecting you (and my dignity) to that, I present to you the little mind bunny that originated five years ago, just...polished up a little ;)_

_Some canon divergence, mostly due to the fact that this was written just a couple months after the release of City of Heavenly Fire. _

_Happy reading :) _

_Disclaimer: I do not own The Mortal Instruments. _

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_"The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief, but the pain of grief is only a shadow as compared to the pain of never risking love." _

* * *

**moments **

Magnus did not normally find himself sitting by the window in deep thought.

Thinking, he found, often brought up far too many problems than he was prepared to deal with. Doing was much better. Doing kept your mind off things (even if all he was doing was lounging around his house sulking).

And yet here he was, staring blankly out at the night sky, thinking.

Thinking about Alec.

He could still feel the burn on his lips, the tingle on his skin when Alec had seized him by the shoulders and kissed him, there, in front of everyone in the Accords Hall, fierce and beautiful and bold, and he'd thought _yes_, this was what love felt like, like flying, like soaring into the heart of the sun —

He'd pulled back, confused and disbelieving, but Alec's eyes were shining and steadfast and _true_ and he'd allowed himself to fall headlong into the flames.

The years had changed them since and he had yet to decide if it was for better or for worse.

It was hard to look at Alec without remembering another black-haired boy with those very blue eyes, who had once come to him for help in the middle of the night, wretched and drowning in despair. That boy was long gone now, gone to a place which Magnus would never know. A place that Alec, too, would one day go.

He could not remember Will's face now, the line of his mouth when he smiled or the precise blue of his eyes. He had faded from memory, the way they all did eventually — the way Alec would someday.

He did not want to think about forgetting Alec, about the day where he would no longer be able to remember the touch of those gentle archer's hands, the sound of his laugh, open and unguarded, the blush on his cheeks when Magnus was particularly flirtatious.

Magnus wondered if could drown in the grief of that alone, if he let himself.

Perhaps to be immortal was to be set apart from humanity, to be something other than human, but in love he was as human as anyone else.

Magnus had tried to fix himself many times over the course of the past three centuries, but he had never quite succeeded in making himself whole. No matter how hard you tried, losing the people you loved always meant letting them take a little bit of you with them when they left.

He tore his gaze away from the window to glance at the sofa where Alec lay sleeping.

He looked like a boy now, tall and lanky and flopped like a dead fish on Magnus' couch. There was no trace of the stoic leader, the weight that war had added to his shoulders, the shadows that grief had painted in his eyes.

Alec looked so terribly young, innocent and asleep and peaceful, that Magnus almost wished he would never wake.

He knew that being a Shadowhunter meant the world to Alec — that he would never choose another path — but even so, he wished he could protect Alec from this, from a world where he worried every day that Alec would never come home, a world that gave impossible burdens to children nowhere near old enough to carry them.

He thought of those who had been lost in the Dark War, thought with sadness of Mark Blackthorn, abducted by the Hunt, and separated from his family forever. He thought of little Emma Carstairs, with the same steel in her that he'd seen in Jem all those years ago in the London Institute. He thought of Clary, who had been reunited with her brother only to lose him forever, and who had not allowed it to crush her. He thought of Raphael Santiago, still a boy, always a boy to him — dead because he had valued Magnus' life over his.

Vampires were demonic, evil and soulless and condemned to hell — and yet Magnus found himself hoping that Raphael had defied the odds as he always did, had stared Heaven in the eyes and bent it to his will. Magnus didn't believe in much but he liked to believe that Raphael was happy — wherever he was.

So many lives, the Dark War had taken. So many lives gone, and the ones that remained...they would never be the same.

"Magnus?"

Alec's voice was low and sleepy and confused, like a child waking after a nightmare, and Magnus let the sound of it chase away his spiraling thoughts.

He turned from the window to see Alec peering at him, propped up on one elbow. "What are you doing?"

Magnus perched on the edge of the couch and gently ran his hands through Alec's hair, dark strands falling like silk in his fingers.

"Just thinking," he murmured.

"What about?"

The Shadowhunter leaned into his touch, warm and inviting, and Magnus' hand slid to his cheek. Alec's skin was flushed, almost glowing in the moonlight and Magnus would have been content to spend forever just tracing the arch of Alec's cheekbones and the soft bow of his lips.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with right now," Magnus said, light and teasing, because he couldn't bear the thought of putting those shadows back in Alec's eyes, the lines on his face, not now that he was finally resting. "Just sleep."

"You need to sleep too," Alec said softly. "Come to bed, Magnus."

They had not slept in the same bed in months, had barely had a moment to themselves since the end of the Dark War, and for a second Magnus' mind flooded with all the anxieties that he'd kept at bay — that they were too different, too changed, and _why_ was he doing this when he knew how it would end —

Alec's hand slid up over his own, slim fingers intertwining in his, blue eyes iridescent in the darkness and starlight gilding his hair like gold and Magnus thought _surely_, this was what angels looked like.

He let himself fall into Alec, into the soft comfort of his touch and the reassurance of his heartbeat, strong and steady against his.

They were both on the couch now, crammed together in a space not even meant for one of them, but Alec's head was nestled in the crook of his neck and Alec's arms were wrapped around him and they fit together — awkward and uncomfortable and heavy — but it was them, and Magnus thought that perhaps this, this second, this moment, this lifetime of moments, would be worth everything after all.

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_~ fin ~_


End file.
